Scream
by Be Summer Rain
Summary: They promised justice and a million other pretty words.


I didn't scream. I swear I didn't. I couldn't find the voice, even when his hand wasn't covering my mouth. Like the nightmares I always had when I was a kid. I'd wake up, gasping and thrashing, but I never screamed. He told me not to. I didn't scream. And I didn't wake up.

Is he coming back? I knew he'd come back. He wouldn't leave me. Footsteps and footsteps – too many. He brought his friends. And now I'm praying to a god I don't believe in, because I am already too broken for any more. But surely this place is too unholy for a deity.

"Sweetie? Can you hear us?" Something's wrong. This isn't what I thought. I wish I could see. Move. I wish I could scream. I wish a thousand things and I hardly dare to breathe.

Air. There's air on my face. And I can see, even if shapes are blurry and colors distorted. "It's all right," says the woman, efficiently slicing through whatever he used to tie me down. I want to laugh; what a stupid thing to say. I'm not a child. It's not all right. It will never be all right.

This room is filthy. This whole city is dirty. Under my nails, blown against corners, smokestacks leaving ashes in the sky. Soot and black and dirt that won't come off. It won't come off; it's dirt and it's me now.

I hate hospitals. My brother died in one, you know. He was three. He fell, and he hit his head, and they swore to us that he would be fine. A mild concussion. But they kept him for observation, and at 3:04 in the morning the little line on his heart monitor went flat and the room went shrill with death and I was at home, asleep. Seven years old and whining about wanting pancakes instead of cereal that morning, before my mother told me. Seven years old and dressed in black.

She's holding my hand, that woman. They're opening me up and making things sting and swabbing me and it's humiliating as all hell, and she's sitting here holding my hand like it's just another day. I don't need her to baby me, and I don't let go.

Some doctor is talking to me. Emergency contraceptives? I can't; I'm Catholic. I look at him mutely. I can't process anything else right now. The woman presses my hand and mutters something to the doctor, and I watch him leave. Then I turn to her and find her watching me.

"I'm Olivia," she says softly. I had a friend named Olivia, once. In third grade. She had blonde pigtails and she moved to Washington the next year. "I'm a detective with the New York Police Department. Can you tell me what happened?" Yes. My only weapon, and I know it. So I open my mouth and throw up.

She doesn't even blink.

"I took the contraceptives," I tell her later, when she and her partner show up at my door. "I didn't want…someone like him." She nods, and I follow them to their car. It's a pretty crappy car. It's a pretty crappy job.

"You know what you have to do, right?" he asks.

I nod, and I guess he sees me in the rearview mirror.

"It's always the hardest part," says Olivia gently.

"So this is your job?" I ask, ignoring a wave of nausea. "Listening to people relive…everything?" She and her partner exchange a glance. They are world-weary. Ready to lie down on the sidewalk with their arms outstretched and close their eyes.

"Yes," he says finally. "And then helping those people." They are the justice-seekers. They still believe that they can change the world.

I should have washed my hair. It's brown and straight and looks horrible when I forget to wash it, but it's all I can do to get out of bed; washing my hair would leave me near to collapse. But I didn't expect to be on parade here. I don't want their sympathetic looks. I don't want anyone to look at me at all.

She tells me to start from the beginning. "I was walking home from school," I say, and hate the way my voice hitches.

"What college?"

I shake my head. "High school," I say, and watch the surprise register in their eyes. I am seventeen. I am not a child.

"I could see…I could see my house. Down at the corner of the street. And I really wanted to get home, because I knew my mom had just been to the store and I was hungry and –"

And now I'm crying. Sobbing big and loud like a baby. My head down and my cheeks wet and dirty hair all over the table. They can't hear me through my tears and I keep talking anyway, because maybe it'll drain the poison out of me. He grabbed me by the arm. Said he'd been waiting to talk to me. I jerked away but he held on and I still have the fingerprint bruises. He said no, actually, he had something a little more interesting in mind. He kicked out the cardboard in a basement window. Pulled me down there with him. Don't make me tell it all. God, please, don't make me tell it all.

I know they can't see me. But I can't help shuddering as I look at their faces through glass. Any one of them could be him. I don't recognize any of them, and when I tell her that, she whispers that it's okay. But I can hear the disappointment in her voice.

I don't like to walk alone anymore. I don't like to be on the streets at all. It could be anyone walking near me. The grocer a block away. The man crossing the street by the requisite Starbucks. The college student riding his bike to the park. And I don't like to take showers, because even when I scrub my skin red and raw I know I'll never get clean. I will never feel clean.

They promised to find him. They promised justice and closure and a million other pretty words that mean nothing at all. And I told them I would testify. That I would scream and scream and scream until my lungs gave out. Until the whole world heard.

(the end)


End file.
